A mailing list allows you to:

1)“Recycle” your traffic by allowing you to email your list with updates and bring them back to your blog over and over again.

2)Earn money by selling ad space within your newsletter.

3)Start making sales overnight by sending out a special offer exclusive to you list .

4)Do joint ventures with other online entrepreneurs who are looking to promote their new product.

5)Build an asset with real cash value.

They key to building a list quickly is giving your visitors or prospects an incentive to join your list.

After all, few people will willingly give up their contact information unless you give them a good reason to do so.

Capturing your blog visitors contact information is actually fairly simple, if you know what you’re doing. All you need to do is offer your visitors something they would want that can be digitally delivered, like an ebook, or an audio or video product.

You should have an idea of what your blog visitors are interested in because they are looking at your blog and are therefore interested in the kind of information you have to offer. But going the extra step and setting up a survey with survey monkey or setting up an ASK campaign to see what they want would be even better.

All You then need to do is find or create an information product that one of your visitors would also be interested in.

For example, suppose you have a blog that chronicles your travels across the world and divulges all kinds of travel secrets like how to save money in different places or how to avoid scams overseas, etc.

You would then need to find a travel related information product to use as a list building incentive.

To find such a product you could either search the Internet for a travel related information product with resell rights or compile one yourself.

….Or you could just go to ebay.com.

On Ebay you can find an information product with resell rights on just about any topic you can imagine in less than 2 minutes and without spending more than $2!

Offering such an information product to you visitors in exchange for their contact information will give you the incentive offer often necessary to get visitors to sign up to your list.

Remember that the faster you build your email list and the bigger it becomes, the more money you will ultimately make.

Here are four key tips to make your email copy more compelling.

Keep it Short

Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Make some paragraphs as short as one sentence, and make some sentences as short as one word. Also, each paragraph shouldn’t be more than about 4 or 5 lines. The key is to make your email easy to read with plenty of white space. Long word blocks are intimidating and make a person less likely to read. Also, forget what you learned in English class back in the day, you don’t need to make paragraph breaks based on content.

Don’t be Wordy

Simple enough. Keep things clear and simple. Make sure your message is clear and concise. If your messages are long, just be sure to tighten up your message and make it flow. If you want to be eloquent and wordy, become an English professor. This is marketing, so act accordingly.

Use Action Verbs

Make your sentences more powerful with the liberal use of actions verbs. You want your email to be clear enough for a 7 year old to understand. People get frustrated if they have to spend too much time figuring out what you have to say, so make it easy for them.

Use Compelling Subheadings

Your subheadings should be like mini-headlines. Use them to break up large bodies of text and to bring people back into the body of the letter. Many people will only scan your email, so make the subheads communicate a clear message.

Once you get a subscriber to your list, knowing how to maximize your profit over the long term should be your next concern. Writing effective email copy will enable you to get sales almost on demand, thereby increasing your ability to profit from your list significantly.

If you do this, you will be way ahead of the game and in a far better position than most marketers because you will know exactly what your market wants. When you are in that position, it makes it easy to write emails, write copy, and provide content for your list, because you know exactly what it wants.

It might seem odd, but it might be a good idea to hold off on collecting people’s names and email address in order to focus on getting as many answers to as many questions as you can within a shorter period of time. In the long run, the amount of insight that you gain into the mind of your market will more than make up for the few names that you didn’t get on your list while getting your 100 answers.

Use the answers you get from your questions to write bullet points on sales copy, headlines, and other things on your squeeze page. You now have a true window into the mind of your prospect, because with an ASK campaign, you don’t have to rely on guess work and assumptions.

If you want to use paid advertising for your ASK campaign, start by asking what they want. Then on your thank-you page you can then offer the opportunity to join your list.

Another technique is to offer a free e-course or free report on the squeeze page to get the prospect to opt-in. Then, the Thank you page say something along the lines of: “Thanks for subscribing. You’ll be getting your first lesson soon. In the meantime, what is you single biggest question about ____ topic.”

This process will help you to begin building a relationship with your niche. Then, while you are developing content based on the answers to the questions in the ASK campaign, you can also recommend products that are worthwhile to your list.

If you want to skyrocket your Internet success and income, you should take seriously the job of building a bond and rapport with your list. That is done by having personality, offering valuable content, and being trustworthy in your product recommendation. If you do those things, you will be able to make much more money in the long run, and your list will benefit much more from your email marketing as well.

At the end of the day, the ASK campaign all about selling your list what they want, as opposed to selling them what you want to sell them – which is what most people do. Don’t be like most people. Set yourself apart from the crowd.

One key advantage of list marketing is that you can offer the same product to people multiple times to increase your conversion percentage. If you only have a simple web page up, once the visitor leaves, you have lost the sale. The truth is that most buyers don’t buy on the first exposure, but rather usually the sale doesn’t occur until someone is exposed to a product at least 3 or 4 times at a minimum, often more times than that. That is the benefit of an email list. You have control over how much exposure a subscriber gets to the product you are promoting.

Second, instant web site traffic is one of the most powerful aspects of list marketing. The fastest way to send traffic to a page is to send an email to your list. If you have a list with thousands of people, you can literally get thousands of people to visit the web page of your choice in a matter of a few hours. And the best part is it’s free. So if there is a promotion that is ending in a few minutes, or in an hour, there is no better way to send traffic than through your email list.

Third, you can also pre-sell or warm up your list and increase the chances of conversion. If you have a product of yours or an affiliate product that you want to promote, you can send a series of messages introducing the appeal of what you want to offer without overtly selling. You also can build anticipation for it. When the product is finally released, it will be much easier to convince subscribers to buy it, because they are already anticipating it. This is very easy to do through list marketing.

And fourth, no more leaving money on the table – maximize the amount of money you can make. Traffic is expensive, so once you have it, make the most of it. To get people to your web page, you either exert time and effort or money. Wouldn’t it make sense to only have to try to work once to get a customer for life? That is what building a list does. Once you get email addresses, you don’t have write articles or use pay per click or other traffic techniques for customers anymore, because you now have them in your funnel. Save yourself the effort and get the customers’ email address on their first visit, then you don’t have to use any traffic techniques for that customer.

To get on the path to writing effective email copy, here are 8 tips.

Personalize

It helps to use the customer’s name in the email and sometimes in the subject line (don’t overdo it though). When a person sees their name, they feel more of a personal connection and will be more likely to be responsive to your email.

Write the Way You Speak

Use easy to understand English when writing email copy. It’s nice if you have a big vocabulary, but don’t try to impress your subscribers with it. Write the way you would talk to an old friend. Try to be as friendly and as personable as you can when you write.

Write Passionate Emails

You can’t see your customer when you write emails, so be sure to put some extra feeling in email copy. Be enthusiastic. You want to catch the attention of the reader and stay as far from boring them as possible.

Write to One Person

Imagine the ideal prospect and write your email to that person. No matter how many people are reading your messages, each person who reads them reads them as one individual. Writing as if you are writing to one person will increase the impact of the message on each individual.

Keep it Short Buddy

Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Make some paragraphs can be as short as one sentence, and make some sentences as short as one word. Also, each paragraph shouldn’t be more than about 4 or 5 lines. The key is to make your email easy to read with plenty of white space. Long word blocks are intimidating and make a person less likely to read. Also, forget what you learned in English class back in the day, you don’t need to make paragraph breaks based on content.

Don’t be Wordy

Simple enough. Keep things clear and simple. Make sure your message is clear and concise. If your messages are long, just be sure to tighten up your message and make sure it flows. If you want to be eloquent and wordy, become an English professor. This is marketing, so act accordingly.

Use Action Verbs

Make your sentences more powerful with the liberal use of actions verbs. You want your email to be clear enough for a 7 year old to understand. People get frustrated if they have to spend too much time figuring out what you have to say, so make it easy for them.

Use Compelling Subheadings

Your subheadings should be like mini-headlines. Use them to break up large bodies of text and to bring people back into the body of the letter. Many people will only scan your email, so make the subheads communicate a clear message.

Gain Their Trust

One thing you have to do is gain the trust of your subscribers. If your subscribers don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. The way to gain their trust is to give them valuable information. Don’t try to sell them something every chance you get. You actually have to make an effort to refer them to valuable content. And when you do recommend products, be honest. In the long run, your honesty will pay off because people like to buy from people they trust.

Offer Them Specials

Offer specials to your subscribers. When you give people special treatment and go out of your way to please them, they feel indebted to you and they like you more. When you list feels they owe you and when they like you, they will be more likely to buy. Also, a discount obviously makes your product less expensive, so that will increase the number of buyers. And the feeling of being in a special club helps as well, so be sure to mention that the discount is only for list members. And most importantly, make sure you mean it.

Create Short Reports

Another way to use email list marketing effectively is to create short reports to sell to your list. This is a little used method that gives you a taste of product creation without having to commit too much. You can create a short 15-20 page report and sell it your list for $10, or whatever price you think is appropriate. You can create a product a month this way pretty easily. As your list grows, this will be an easy way to make quick money. Once you have a number of reports completed, you can also offer a package deal to get them all for a significantly discounted price.

The main reason for this message is to convey the importance of paying close attention to and studying the autoresponder messages of effective email marketers.  What do they say in their email copy and how do they say it?  How much personality are they using?  Do they provide you with valuable content?  Pay attention to all of these key points.

The reason you should pay such close attention to these points is so you can use their messages as a foundation to write your own.  Do you think you have something to learn from someone who makes $30,000 just by sending a single email?  Probably.  As is common in the copy writing industry, a swipe file is something you should have.  But this swipe file will be of emails, not sales letters.  Look at the email copy that made you purchase a particular product or service and use that as a basic model for some of your products.

I’m not advocating wholesale confiscation of emails, unless of course you have have been given explicit rights to do so.  I’m talking about ideas to use as a foundation.

For me, a few email marketers stand out from the rest.  One of them is Michael Rasmussen.  When he sends an email recommending an affiliate product, he doesn’t just send a two line email saying in so many words- “Buy this.”  He gives a thorough rationale for why he is recommending a particular product.  And some of the stuff he gives away for free is pure gold.  So Michael is alright with me.

Another marketer who is quickly building a name for himself and who impresses me quite a bit is Jason Fladlien.  He’s an interesting guy.  And in email marketing, being interesting sells.  He’s also a top class copy writer, which helps tremendously in writing emails.  I recommend you check some of his stuff out.  He makes like 20 products a year it seems- if not more.

Frank Kern’s stuff is some of the most “borrowed” stuff out there- particularly his email subject lines, like “bad news”.  He is a trend starter, so he’s definitely one to pay attention to.  If he starts to do something, expect others to follow soon.

I think my point is clear.  Pay attention to the Internet marketers who actually provide value in their emails.  Pay attention to the marketers who draw you in with their autoresponders, the ones who make you feel like you are being somehow compelled to buy. Then use some of their ideas in your own email copy.

So whether you provide an e-course, free reports, videos, coupons, audios, or whatever else, make sure you provide it with the intention of actually helping your list.  That should be the primary goal.  If you prove to them that you are a trustworthy source of valuable information, they will trust you, and they will want to purchase what you recommend, whether it is an affiliate product or a product of you own.

On the other hand, if you abuse their trust, they will not buy from you and they will unsubscribe from your list.  Some especially spiteful customers may even report you for spamming them (even if it is untrue) because they are frustrated that you are constantly pitching to them without providing anything of value.

So don’t be that person.  Be the other guy- the guy the customers look forward to getting messages from.  Remember, building trust and a relationship is the central email marketing strategy needed to have a responsive list that buys the things you offer.